The Best Short Stories of 1920, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story. Various
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the dark hair and the chalky face of his wife. Her wide eyes stared at him strangely.
"Don't touch me," she whispered. "What am I going to do?"
"Joe?"
"Why do you tremble so?" she asked in her colorless voice, without resonance. "Why didn't you come?"
"Joe?" he repeated hysterically.
She drew away from him.
"You won't want to touch me again."
He pointed to the repellant bruises. She shook her head.
"He didn't hurt me much," she whispered, "because I—I killed him."
She drew her other hand from the folds of her wrapper. The revolver dangled from her fingers. It slipped and fell to the floor. The child stared at it with round eyes, as if he longed to pick it up.
She covered her face and shrank against the wall.
"I've killed a man——"
Through her fingers she looked at her husband fearfully. After a time she whispered:
"Why don't you say something?"
His trembling had ceased. His lips were twisted in a grin. He, too, wondered why he didn't say something. Because there were no words for what was in his heart.
In a corner he arranged his overcoat as a sort of a bed for the boy.
"Won't you speak to me?" she sobbed. "I didn't mean to, but I had to. You got to understand. I had to."
He went to the table and commenced to tap vigorously on the key. She ran across and grasped at his arm.
"What you telling them?" she demanded wildly.
"Why, Sally!" he said. "What's the matter with you?—To send another man now Joe is gone."
Truths emerged from his measureless relief, lending themselves to words. He trembled again for a moment.
"If I hadn't stayed! If I'd let them smash! When all along it only needed Joe to keep all those people from getting killed."
He sat down, caught her in his arms, drew her to his knee, and held her close.
"You ain't going to scold?" she asked wonderingly.
He shook his head. He couldn't say any more just then; but when his tears touched her face she seemed to understand and to be content.
So, while the boy slept, they waited together for someone to take Joe's place.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Copyright, 1920, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright, 1921, by Charles Wadsworth Camp.
THE PARTING GENIUS[7]
By HELEN COALE CREW
From The Midland
"The parting genius is with sighing sent." Milton's Hymn on the Nativity.
It was high noon, blue and hot. The little town upon the southern slope of the hills that shut in the great plain glared white in the intense sunlight. The beds of the brooks in the valleys that cut their way through the hill-clefts were dry and dusty; and the sole shade visible lay upon the orchard floors, where the thick branches above cast blue-black shadows upon the golden tangle of grasses at their feet. A soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows. The poppies that flecked the yellow wheat fields drooped heavily, spilling the wine of summer from their cups. Nature stood at drowsy-footed pause, reluctant to take up again the vital whirr of living.
At the edge of the orchard, near the dusty highway, under a huge misshapen olive tree sat a boy, still as a carven Buddha save that his eyes stood wide, full of dreams. His was a sensitive face, thoughtful beyond his childish years, full of weariness when from time to time he closed his eyes, full of dark brooding when the lids lifted again. Presently he rose to his feet, and his two hands clenched tightly into fists.
"I hate it!" he muttered vehemently.
At his side the grasses stirred and a portion of the blue shadow of the tree detached itself and became the shadow of a man.
"Hate?" questioned a golden, care-free voice at his side. "Thou'rt overyoung to hate. What is it thou dost hate?"
A young man had thrown himself down in the grass at the boy's side. Shaggy locks hung about his brown cheeks; his broad, supple chest and shoulders were bare; his eyes were full of sleepy laughter; and his indolent face was now beautiful, now grotesque, at the color of his thoughts. From a leathern thong about his neck hung a reed pipe, deftly fashioned, and a bowl of wood carved about with grape-bunches dangled from the twisted vine which girdled his waist. In one hand he held a honey-comb, into which he bit with sharp white teeth, and on one arm he carried branches torn from fig and almond trees, clustered with green figs and with nuts. The two looked long at each other, the boy gravely, the man smiling.
"Thou wilt know me another time," said the man with a throaty laugh. "And I shall know thee. I have been watching thee a long time—I know not why. But what is it thou dost hate? For me, I hate nothing. Hate is wearisome."
The boy's gaze fixed itself upon the bright, insouciant face of the man with a fascination he endeavored to throw off but could not. Presently he spoke, and his voice was low and clear and deliberate.
"Hate is evil," he said.
"I know not what evil may be," said the man, a puzzled frown furrowing the smooth brow for a swift moment. "Hunger, now, or lust, or sleep—"
"Hate is the thing that comes up in my throat and chokes me when I think of tyranny," interrupted the boy, his eyes darkening.
"Why trouble to hate?" asked the man. He lifted his pipe to his lips and blew a joyous succession of swift, unhesitant notes, as throbbing as the heat, as vivid as the sunshine. His lithe throat bubbled and strained with his effort, and his warm vitality poured through the mouthpiece of the pipe and issued melodiously at the farther end. Noon deepened through many shades of hot and slumberous splendor, the very silence intensified by the brilliant pageant of sound. A great hawk at sail overhead hung suddenly motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves of sound.
"Why trouble to hate?" he asked again, and sank his shoulder deeper into the warm grass. His voice was as sleepy as the drone of distant bees, and his dream-filmed eyes looked out through drooping lids. "I hate nothing. It takes effort. It is easier to feel friendly with all things—creatures, and men, and gods."
"I hate with a purpose," said the child, his eyes fixed, and brooding upon an inward vision. The man rose upon his elbow and gazed curiously at the boy, but the latter, unheeding, went on with his thoughts. "Some day I shall be a man, and then I shall kill tyranny. Aye, kill! It is tyranny that I hate. And hatred I hate; and oppression. But how I shall go about to kill them, that I do not yet know. I think